The Effects of Remedial Mathematics on the Learning of Economics: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper examines the effects of remedial mathematics on performance in university-level economics courses using a natural experiment. We study exam results prior and subsequent to the implementation of a remedial mathematics course that was compulsory for a sub-set of students and unavailable for the others, controlling for background variables. We find that, consistent with previous studies, the level of and performance in secondary-school mathematics have strong predictive power on students’ performance at university-level economics. However, we find relatively little evidence for a positive effect of remedial mathematics on student performance.